Paper Vote Canada

The Toronto Star (CP) reports

Allowing Canadians to vote electronically may be the remedy for the ever-dwindling percentage of voters who bother to exercise their democratic rights, Elections Canada suggests.

In a report released late Friday, the independent electoral watchdog says it will push this fall for legislative changes that would allow it to implement online registration of voters.

And it wants parliamentary approval to conduct an electronic voting test-run in a byelection by 2013.

Elections Canada backs online voting - June 26, 2009

(It's not actually clear to me if they're talking about electronic voting machines, or voting online. Both approaches have huge flaws.)

As readers of this blog will already know, I favour the traditional in-person enumeration, and voting on paper in public. These are simple processes that are critical to the integrity of our democracy.

I've already written a critique of the idea that electronic voting will help with voter turnout - citizen engagement and e-voting. I have also outlined many, many times the security risks associated with electronic voting.

Electronic voting is a very bad idea based on incorrect assumptions.

And if you don't think having total confidence in the results of an election is important, check out the current situation in Iran. Elections matter.

This blog started in 2004 before the days of hashtags and such, but I'm suggesting hashtag #evotecan and tag evotecan for this issue.

There are also a few searches that should pull up references to this particular article:

Twitter - Elections Canada backs online voting
Twitter - bit.ly link to Toronto Star article
Google News - articles related to "elections canada" electronic

Labels: canada, elections canada, electronic voting, evotecan